L5 S1

I feel so distant from the pain that was within me earlier this year; both physically and emotionally.

It’s hard to believe it was only nine months ago when I questioned if I’d be able to walk “normally” again- without pain, without limping. I wasn’t very good at listening to my body and would struggle explaining to my GP and neurosurgeon, where the pain was, how it felt and the severity of the nerve pain. I work with universities helping to train medical students in communication, by pretending to be a patient. You’d think after years of talking injuries, accidents, unfortunate diagnosis’ and death, I’d have a handle on the pain scale structure and what information is required for history taking. Yet when it’s happening to you, well, what is real feels very different to what is not.

The medical team suggested I make pain notes. Pain is a strange thing, hard to control, hard to process and at times hard to heal.  I made a conscious effort not to let this pain be a vocal point in my life. 

“This is not going to become part of my identity,” I thought, so only in the margins of my diary I wrote out my pain in red pen:

2.3.15

+hurts

+hurts when I sleep

+hurts when I wake

+when I walk

+standing hurts

+bending down hurts

3.3.15

+same as the day before

+hurts when I cough

+after walking for a while I forget the pain

4.3.15

+a little better when I stood up this morning

+still hurts when I cough

5.3.15

+sore all day, filming all day  = standing all day

6.3.15

+hurts getting up

+cried at the physio

+hurt all day

+pain killers not helping

7.3.15

+hurt in the morning

+hurts holding things

+hurts to walk

+couldn’t pick up car keys off the ground

+new pills from GP

+getting older tomorrow

8.3.15 [#birthday]

+hurts when I sneeze

+hurts when I cough

+used heat patch

9.3.15

+left sign school early because of pain

10.3.15

+NO PAIN IN THE MORNING!!!

11.3.15

+woke in pain

+hurts when I cough

+got sent home from work

+cried on the floor

the following was a ‘to do’ list I had written at the time:

-sleep

-cry

-listen to records

-lay on the floor

-cry

-sleep

-walk

-repeat

I’m glad that I wrote these things out because I’d forgotten, not necessarily the effects but how it felt. It was terrible but I couldn’t be as thankful as I am right now, if I were not able to re-read what I’d gone through. I made a decision to take time and write the specifics about what I was going through at that time in my life and I’m glad I did.

It’s a process and I still have to be careful. Now there are days when I have no pain. I remember thinking “if you can’t feel your spine, it’s a good time”.  I’m hopeful that in time I will be closer to that point.

This morning I had physio-pilates at 7:20am on a pain scale where 1 is the least amount of pain I’ve experienced and 10 is the most; I would rate this mornings session at 2. Earlier this year I would say I’d hit a 10 for sure.

Throughout this year, even when I was on 4 different medications and my health needed to be a priority more than ever; I was still able to finish all my assignments and graduate sign school. I had my first composition performed live, I moved house, continued to work and support myself, drove a bus to Alice Spring, started taking piano lessons and got my taxes done. We are capable of some much more that we think we are.

To my GP, neurosurgeon, psychologist, physiotherapist x2, my sister and my dear friends; to whom without their support, the struggle would have been so much more real, I thank you.

So much has changed and I’m so thankful.

What did you learn?

• -     Healing is a mystery; it can happen over time or can happen in a moment.
• -       Writing is a great way to process what you’re going through.
• -       Don’t let the biggest pain in your life be the biggest thing in your mind.
• -       Sometimes really hard things happen and all you can control is your response to these things.
• -       You need other people, you can’t do everything on your own.
• -       One of the most important things in life are the choices that you make.

one year ago today...

14 feb twothousand and fourteen 

i have this sick feeling of being full and empty all at once. Its the same feeling i've had for a few weeks now i guess... and i can't work out if it started because that boy stopped talking to me or because my aunty died or just because of 2014... either way, in the Melbourne Airport alone waiting for my flight to Vietnam that i booked last night, i find it interesting- life; who we were, who we're becoming and who we'll be in the end.

im usually the kind of person not to make big plans unless there is some reason or purpose; yet when it comes to something i feel i must do, i seem to act immediately- this is one of those times.

2014 has brought my much heartache so far with the one year anniversary of Frank's death, the injustice of what i know the kids from camp have to deal with. Seeing that boy, loving that boy and losing that boy in such a short space of time. My aunty's death, last week, and the pain left behind, almost unbearable. What my uncle and the boys have to face and they are so young and i can't count how many times i've said to myself "it's not ok, it's not fair"

All this and i'm still forced to care for myself when i have never felt so careless, so weak...

I make myself eat, when im not hungry. Make myself talk about it, when i don't want to. Make myself wake, when sleep calls my name and I hear it whisper "forever".

i can't see forward anymore and i catch myself thinking to not be alive wouldn't be such a bad thing and im too curious about all the things i can't see and what they see now- without me. When it really comes down to it and you're low and never have you felt so weak, you still, i still look up to the sky, the sunset ablaze in beauty and i know the sweetness of His love.

How beautiful God is, how constant and never changing. And what i find is that the strength of pure joy and the weight  of worldly pain are together. Just like it was from the beginning- the hurt that God went through, that sacrifice and yet unspeakable love and passion shown on that same day. He has felt everything i feel. 

i am overwhelmed by all the He is and so i find myself longing to be with Him always, in His midst; complete. The Holy Spirit, my great friend, has struck my with a compassion i have never known before; i am very fragile about the simplest of sorrows and human suffering in life. I feel at any moment i could weep, for all the thoughts, all the feelings, all the mystery and i have already- yes, for strangers, cried for them and i don't understand it... 

All i know right now is that im leaving my country for a short time, in search of more of God, a new aspect of His heart [well, new to me]/

Anything could happen and whatever does i know this much- that i will keep coming back to the only one that freely gives perfect peace. Jesus.

#camplife

I walked to the closest café, my spine won’t take me far; I feel slow in all ways, since august, if im honest. I know it’ll pass, these things do, it’ll just take time. Time being something I always have plenty of and not enough simultaneously. And I remember writing “I’ve been trying to push the days out the window; to make them jump. I feel like the quicker they come and go, the closer we’ll get to each other” #time

While my sign school class took holidays, I took to Phillip Island, working two weeks on camp. Camp is a complex beast; something hard and beautiful and worth it. I don’t want to over think it but must always find a way to process the experience by the end or I don’t know how I’d go back again.

In some ways normal; cabins, a lake, canoes, a giant swing, coffee, laser tag, calling the police on a kid, watching the blue penguins come to shore for the evening, sunrises, sunsets, coffee, a butter knife thrown at my face, camp food, orange t-shirts, a long drive and questions…so many questions.

Why do you have a boy hair cut?

How long until we’re there?

Why can’t we go to the Melbourne show this year?

What’s ‘will you be my girlfriend’ in sign language?

What’s ‘you’re a dump ****’ in sign language? 

You taught us the colours, why won’t you teach me that!?

How many penguins are in Australia?

Why is the ocean blue and why do the waves do that?

Is that the time coming in?

Where are they going?

Can I take one home?

Do I have to do home?

How may sleeps until camp again?

Who started the world?

If I wanted to go to heaven, whats the best way to get there?

Why don't you have a boyfriend?

Why doesn’t my dad love me?

And so many more. And I find I’m naturally very honest about how much I do or don’t understand. Kids respond to honesty. These kids do.

I have been doing this for over 2 years now and I would say this camp was the toughest yet, and yes, having a knife thrown at me was terrible experience and calling the police in wasn’t great either. It moves me every time and I have a heat patch on my spin and tears fall from my eyes sitting here, at this café from all kinds of pain but I will keep going back as long as I can because when im with those kids, I feel I am really living. If I can give them a glimpse of hope that suggests they can grow into a decent human, a positive contributor to society and someone they can look at in the mirror and think ‘today I like you’; then in my mind that’s worth it.

The reality is these kids come from very difficult situations and they’re not in some distance, far away place; they are in our backyard.

My housemate said it “might be time to look for another less dangerous holiday job” and the physio said “you’ve been accepted for the 12 month health plan, usually I only have people with obesity or lung problems; normally heavy smokers- so that must be some kind of pain you’re in.” to which I replied “it’s not the worst pain I have...”

It’s only a small window of time I get to spend with these kids and I believe that hope is so important and I see unique potential in each child I interact with and I’m so far from not caring. When it comes to camp I think “I can’t just do nothing about it, when I can do something about it.”

And so I’ve decided I’m willing to take whatever life throws at me… literally.

I woke before sunrise one morning, while everything on the island was still new and unfamiliar. I found my way to the beach to watch the sunrise. Upon reflecting on that morning, I wrote the poem below, in case my writing is illegible, here it is:

“Remember early when your colours called my name.

Breaking into dawn, 

spilt in, 

old from new. 

Darkness before me; I walked the field. 

Dew and grass and mud on boots, I didn’t mind- 

in fact the opposite.

All the sounds of children, even in my sleep, never ceasing and

I climbed the restless night wide in thought. 

Now with one simple step in front of another; I anticipate your next move.

Chasing down your mystery with a ‘why’

and many

and always seeking.

Content but never satisfied until I know. 

And I see you in the water, in the sky, in the eyes of others. 

If a howl,

if a whisper 

or in the silence breaking through; 

your colours always calling me, drawing me to you.”

#1stworldproblems...

#abouttoday...
"the 'sleeping bus' was more like an adventure ride at movieworld; the only difference being- that is simulated; this is real...
we got on the bus at 5:30pm, the man made us take off our shoes and put them in a bag . Since my shoes had buckles, they were difficult to loosen and before i could even undo one shoe, the bus was moving with the door still open and the shoe man pulled me toward him just in time to save me for being road kill.

we walked down the narrow isle to the very back of the bus; bunkbeds all the way through. i laid down on the top level, next to the window. Bright blue, red and orange lights lined the roof and the Vietnamese music awards were playing on the TV. I looked outside and wondered why this is called '3rd world' and why is mine '1st'? and where is the 2nd? and what does it look like? arent humans so adaptable... and arent problems relative? and do they use the hashtag #thirdworldproblems? and do they have problems because they think they do or because the '1st world' tells them they do...and isn't it only in comparing "worlds" and things and lives that we come to believe we are "so different"? and is it wrong to see something as beauty when it seems equally as devastating as it is beautiful? 

i dont know how anyone could sleep on the 'sleeping bus', i saw two people throw-up. The driver is constantly beeping the horn as the traffic is kinda crazy and then what i can only assume as giant pot holes in the road, so big, that when the bus hits one your whole body gets flung into the air and i dont mean once or twice. There's random intervals throughout the night where the driver puts on the red and blue light- right above my face and i wake up from what i can only describe as- 'eyes closed/using my imagination to pretend im somewhere else'. The sensation of moving while lying down was so strange for me that for a second, after i 'woke' i forgot i had legs- i couldn't feel them... in saying all that, my honest thought was that it was a rare and interesting (almost enjoyable) experience."